Prof. Paul W. Franks

PhD (Cantab) MPhil (Cantab) MS FTOS

Lund University, Helsingborg, Sweden

Prof. Franks is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Head of the Genetic & Molecular Epidemiology Unit at the Department of Clinical Sciences at Lund University in Sweden. He is also Professor and Chair in Translational Precision Medicine at the Precision Healthcare University Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London. Prof. Franks chaired the 1st and 2nd International Consensus Reports on Precision Diabetes Medicine (Chung et al, Diabetes Care, 2020; Tobias et al, Nature Medicine, 2023), the Reporting Guidelines for Precision Medicine Research of Clinical Relevance (Lim et al, Nature Medicine, 2024) and is co-Chair of the NIDDK Heterogeneity of Diabetes Initiative (Cefalu et al, Nature Medicine, 2024). He is also an Executive Committee Member of the Precision Omics Initiative Sweden (PROMISE).

He also chairs The Lancet Commission on Precision Health.

Prof. Carel le Roux

MBChB, FRCP, FRCPath, PhD

Professor of Metabolic Medicine, University College Dublin, Ireland

Carel le Roux is the Chair of Metabolic Medicine at University College Dublin. He coordinated the Innovative Medicine Initiative project, Stratification of Obesity Phenotypes to Optimize Future Therapy (SOPHIA). He previously received a President of Ireland Young Researcher Award, Irish Research Council Laureate Award, Clinician Scientist Award from the National Institute Health Research in the UK, and a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellowship for his work on how the gut talks to the brain. His current work is focussed on understanding the predictor of obesity risk and find the predictors for response to obesity treatments.

Prof. Claudia Langenberg

MSc, MD, PhD, FFPH, FMedSci

Director of Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (PHURI) and Professor of Medicine and Population Health

Claudia Langenberg is Director of the Precision Healthcare University Research Institute at Queen Mary University of London, Honorary Consultant in Public Health at Barts Health NHS Trust, London, and the Department of Health and Social Care, and Professor of Computational Medicine at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, Germany. She is a member of the Leopoldina working group on strategies for the prevention and treatment of adiposity.

Claudia’s research is focused on the genetic regulation of human metabolism, and her work has transformed the use and integration of large-scale, high-resolution molecular and clinical data to systematically characterize genetic effects across organs, tissues and cells and advance our understanding of the causes of diverse human diseases. Claudia has been named in the Best Female Scientists in the World Ranking since 2022 and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

Dr. John Dennis

PhD

Associate Professor, University of Exeter, UK

John is a Wellcome Trust Fellow and Associate Professor of Health Data Science at the University of Exeter Medical School, UK. As a Data Scientist a major focus of his research has been developing data-driven precision medicine approaches for type 2 diabetes, including the recent 5-drug model for type 2 diabetes treatment selection (Dennis et al., The Lancet 2025),  a novel tool which uses routine clinical features to predict the optimal glycaemic therapy for an individual across five major diabetes drug classes. As the model is based on routine features it offers a potential low-cost pragmatic approach to precision prescribing with worldwide applicability. John has experience developing and applying cutting edge methodology for data-driven research into treatment effect heterogeneity, and for combining evidence on differential treatment responses from routine electronic health records and clinical trials. John is a member of the international Precision Medicine in Diabetes executive team, the UK MASTERMIND type 2 diabetes precision medicine consortium, and is a recent recipient of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes Rising Star award.

Dr. Maarten van Smeden

PhD

Associate professor of Health Data Science, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Netherlands

Maarten is a data scientist, trained as a statistician and epidemiologist, with a research focus on the development and evaluation of statistical methodology, with a particular interest in methodology related to the development and validation of prediction models based on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Maarten has had a leading role in several national and international methodological guidelines (e.g. Dutch AI guideline, PROBAST+AI) and has been involved in several international consortia. Maarten has served as associate editor with various prestigious methodological (e.g. Statistics in Medicine) and clinical (e.g. European Heart Journal) and is a member and chair at the STRATOS initiative.

Prof./Dr. Mikael Rydén

MD, PhD

Professor, Senior Consultant in Endocrinology, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital

Mikael Rydén is professor in clinical and experimental adipose tissue research and heads the Center for Clinical Metabolic Research in Diabetes and the Endocrinology Unit at the Karolinska Institute. He is also senior consultant in Endocrinology/Diabetology at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on the role of human adipose tissue in several different conditions and spans from advanced cell- and molecular biology techniques in different cell culture models to clinical studies in man. He served as the Honorary Secretary of the EASD 2018-2022, is currently the vice-chair of the Committee for Clinical Affairs at the EASD, chair of the Strategic Research Programme in Diabetes, and is also a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute.

Naveed Sattar

MBChB, PhD, FRCP, FRCPath, FRSE, FMedSci

Professor of Cardiometabolic Medicine, University of Glasgow

Naveed Sattar is a leading international authority in cardiometabolic medicine whose work has helped shape modern understanding and management of obesity. As Professor of Cardiometabolic Medicine at the University of Glasgow, he has a long-standing track record of driving collaborative, multidisciplinary research across world‑leading epidemiology, clinical trials, disease‑mechanism studies, and guideline development.
Professor Sattar has played major roles in national and international guideline efforts, including contributing to the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) obesity and cardiovascular prevention guidelines, and serving as co‑senior author of the 2025 iCARDIO Alliance Global Implementation Guidelines for the Management of Obesity. These roles reflect his commitment to bridging evidence, policy, and clinical practice through collaboration among clinicians, public‑health experts, and researchers. In recognition of his leadership, he was appointed in late 2023 as the UK Government’s Obesity Mission Chair, positioning him at the centre of national efforts to strengthen research, innovation, and implementation aimed at improving obesity outcomes.
His scientific contributions span numerous influential clinical trials, including lifestyle‑based studies such as DIRECT, UPBEAT, and Re‑DIRECT, as well as major drug trials such as AMPLITUDE‑O, SURPASS‑CVOT, and the SURMOUNT‑4 tirzepatide trial assessing long‑term weight‑loss maintenance. These large‑scale collaborations across international trial networks have strengthened the evidence base for both behavioural and pharmacological strategies to improve obesity and metabolic health.

Prof. Nicholas J Timpson

BA(Oxon), MSc(Oxon), PhD(Bristol), PGCHE, FMedSci

Professor of Genetic Epidemiology, PI ALSPAC, Co-Director Population Research UK

Professor Timpson works in the fields of epidemiology, genetic epidemiology and longitudinal population studies. His work focuses on the application of genetic epidemiology to the dissection of causal relationships between modifiable risk factors and health – applying genomewide association studies, whole genome sequencing, Mendelian randomisation, Recall by Genotype and multi-study triangulation.

Currently, his work uses a mixture of study designs and resources (e.g. genetic epidemiology, metabolomics, proteomics, trials and challenge studies) to examine potentially causal pathways underlying body composition related health associations. Recent work has examined the contribution of genetic variation to microbiome profiles, how rare genetic variation relates to differential life course adiposity, how genetic contributions to metabolic feeding responses relate to likely disease outcomes and how results from basic science findings permit cross-examination of complex disease risk profiles – i.e. dissecting obesity related health relationships. In the field of obesity research, his keen focus is on the availability of detailed molecular phenotyping in multiple studies with independent sources of body composition variation – for example caloric restriction, surgery, pharmaceutical agents and genetics.

As PI for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children(ALSPAC) and now as Director of UKRI Population Research UK, he has championed the value of cohort resources for all researchers to support longitudinal health research. Most recently, he has taken on the role of Director for Population Research UK (PRUK). PRUK is a new national resource designed to maximise the use of UK longitudinal population studies across social, economic and biomedical science.

Prof. Ruth J.F. Loos

PhD

Vice executive director, professor, University of Copenhagen, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research

Ruth Loos is a Vice Executive Director of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR) at the University of Copenhagen and part-time Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She previously led a research program at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, and completed her postdoctoral training at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge after earning her PhD from the University of Leuven, Belgium.

Her research focuses on the genetic underpinnings of obesity to uncover the biology of body weight regulation. As a founding member of the GIANT (Genetic Investigation of ANthropometric Traits) consortium, she spearheaded large-scale gene-discovery efforts for BMI and obesity. Beyond traditional measures, her work explores refined adiposity phenotypes and composite traits to reveal biological insights missed by conventional approaches. Leveraging emerging -omics technologies, her team integrates genetic and proteomic data to identify obesity subtypes, predict risk, and inform tailored prevention and treatment strategies.

Ruth leads the Danish Precision Health Initiative (DELPHI), a 25-year longitudinal study of 10,000 individuals in Denmark designed to generate deep, multidimensional health data. DELPHI is an open, collaborative platform that supports dynamic multi-omics research, clinical trials, and innovation through flexible governance and robust infrastructure.

She has served on numerous scientific advisory boards and program committees and was most recently a Board Member of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD, 2022–2025) and the BioMed Alliance (2024–2025). Ruth is a trustee of European Diabetology. She has held editorial roles for journals including Diabetes, Human Molecular Genetics, PLoS Genetics, eLife, Diabetologia, and Obesity. She has published over 600 papers and holds an H-index of 180.

Dr. Sara G I Suliman

MBBS, FRCP, CCST (General Medicine, Diabetes and Endocrinology), DPhil (Oxon)
SCOPE International Fellow, World Obesity Federation.

Consultant Diabetologist, Endocrinologist, and Obesity Physician,
Clinical Lead for Obesity and Clinical Lead for Genetics
Imperial College London Diabetes Centre, Abu Dhabi, UAE (M42 Health)

Dr Suliman received her specialist and research training at the world-renowned Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism; culminating in a DPhil from Oxford University on the genetics and physiology of regional adipose deposition and insulin resistance. She is a Consultant Endocrinologist, Diabetologist and Obesity Physician at Imperial College London Diabetes Centre, Abu Dhabi. She leads the Multidisciplinary Obesity Team and the Genetics of Diabetes, Obesity and Endocrine disorders service.

Dr Suliman is an Executive Board member, and the President of the Integrated Health Section, of the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders (IFSO). She is also the elected Chairperson of the MENA obesity working group, World Obesity Federation (WOF). She is a subject matter expert on Obesity for  the Department of Health and Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre.

Dr Suliman has contributed to guidelines in Obesity (WOF), Type 2 Diabetes (Emirates Diabetes Society) and Obesity and women’s health (EASO). She is an associate editor for Metabologia (an EASD Journal), and has reviewed for leading journals. She is a co-founder and member of a Global Obesity Management Taskforce, set up to author joint IFSO-WOF evidence-based, comprehensive global obesity management guidelines to cater for countries with high, middle or low income.

Dr Suliman is co-chair of The Nature Medicine Commission on Data-Driven Management of Obesity.

Dr. Giuseppe ‘Nick’ Giordano

DDS FDS MPH PhD

Associate Professor of Public Health Epidemiology
Lund University, Sweden

After fifteen years practising dentistry around the world, Nick transitioned to academia, specialising in Public Health. He earned his PhD in 2012 and was appointed Associate Professor in 2019. Since then, he has co-led work packages and served on the Managing Boards and Executive Committees of multiple pan-European projects and consortia. Having collaborated closely with the Chair Professor Paul Franks for over a decade, Nick brings extensive experience and long-standing partnership to his role as Executive Manager.

Dr. Ricardo V Cohen

MD,PhD

Director, The Center for Obesity and Diabetes, Hospital Alemão Oswaldo Cruz

Dr. Ricardo Cohen is a bariatric and metabolic surgeon, researcher, and international leader in obesity care based in São Paulo, Brazil. He is Director of the Center for Obesity and Diabetes at Hospital Alemão Oswaldo Cruz and Editor-in-Chief of Obesity Surgery. He has held major leadership roles in the field, including President of the International Federation for the Surgery and Other Therapies for Obesity (IFSO) and is currently the Chair of the Clinical Care Committee of the World Obesity Federation(WOF). Across these roles, he has worked to advance evidence-based, multidisciplinary obesity care and to strengthen the integration of medical, behavioral, and surgical approaches within contemporary clinical practice.

Dr. Cohen has contributed extensively to the global obesity field through clinical research, international consensus initiatives, guideline and position-statement development, and professional education. His work has focused on improving how obesity is defined, stratified, and managed in a way that is clinically meaningful and centered on patient outcomes. With experience spanning clinical care, research, education, and international leadership, he brings to this Commission a broad and practical perspective on evidence-based obesity management and on how emerging evidence can be translated into real-world care

Dr. Moustafa Abdalla

MD (Hons), DPhil (Oxon)

Principal Investigator, Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

Dr. Moustafa Abdalla is a surgeon-scientist, whose career has been defined by building the computational tools that translate biological complexity into actionable clinical intelligence. A Rhodes Scholar who completed his DPhil in Computational Statistics & Machine Learning at the University of Oxford before earning his MD with Honors at Harvard Medical School, he has since established himself as a Principal Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where his laboratory develops and deploys AI-driven decision support systems at the frontier of precision medicine. He brings to this Commission the ability to move fluidly between the mathematical architecture of a machine learning model and the lived reality of a patient on the operating table.

His research programme is among the most internationally connected in precision medicine AI, supported by PCORI, the Wellcome Leap VISIBLE Programme, the UK Medical Research Council, and other international grants — spanning institutions across North America, the UK, and Europe. This body of work encompasses transformer-based causal AI for precision diabetes and cardiovascular phenotyping, multimodal generative AI for clinical analytics and trial design, and causal inference studies probing the biological consequences of bariatric surgery and medication-driven weight loss. He holds patents in multi-modal modelling, has published in Science, Nature Communications, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and eLife, and has contributed to clinical practice guidelines. As founding director of the Harvard Medical School AI Laboratory and a recognized voice on equity, security/privacy, and integrity in clinical AI — with work featured in WIRED, STAT News, and the BMJ — Dr. Abdalla will help develop and refine the Commission’s analytical infrastructure.

Dr. Nomathemba Chandiwana

BSc, MBBCh, MPH

Chief Scientific Officer & Desmond Tutu Health Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa 

Dr Nomathemba Chandiwana is Chief Scientific Officer at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa. A clinician-scientist and epidemiologist, her work focuses on HIV, obesity, and cardiometabolic disease in Africa. Her contributions provided early evidence of treatment-associated weight gain in antiretroviral therapy.

She brings to the Commission expertise in translating data-driven insights into scalable, real-world models of care in resource-constrained health systems She leads large-scale implementation programmes within South Africa's public sector, applying implementation science to integrate complex interventions into routine care at scale, drawing on HIV delivery platforms to inform obesity care models including risk stratification, adherence, and equitable access.

Under her scientific leadership, the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation received the 2025 United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force Award, recognised globally for pioneering action on obesity. She contributes to global obesity strategy through the World Obesity Federation and IFSO joint guidelines initiative, chairs the research committee of the South African Metabolic Medicine and Surgery Society, Obesity TWG and is Reviews Editor for HIV Medicine.

Prof. Karsten Suhre

Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar
Professor of Systems and Computational Biomedicine

Karsten Suhre is a Professor of Systems and Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Director of the Bioinformatics and Virtual Metabolomics Core at the Cornell campus in Doha, Qatar. He is also the Assistant Dean for Intercampus Research Partnerships and Member of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine in New York. Before joining Cornell University in 2011, Dr. Suhre held a Professorship for Bioinformatics at the Department of Biology of the Ludwig-Maximillian-University in Munich, Germany, where lead the Metabolomics Research Group at the Institute for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology of the Helmholtz Center Munich. Between 1994 and 2006, he served at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), first as a Charge and then as a Director of Research, with a two-year interruption from 2000 to 2001, where he worked as a Project Engineer in the German Automotive Industry.

Trained as a theoretical physicist pursuing a very interdisciplinary career in Atmospheric Sciences, Bacterial and Viral Genomics, and Protein Bioinformatics, Dr. Suhre pioneered the field of genome-wide association studies with metabolomics and proteomics and is now investigating how human genetics, metabolomics and proteomics interact with environmental challenges and lifestyle factors in the development of complex disorders, especially diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney diseases. Dr. Suhre co-authored over 350 publications totalling 27,000 citations and an H-index of 82 (Scopus) including a Nature paper as first and corresponding author in the Atmospheric Sciences (Suhre et al., Nature 1997) and one in the Life Sciences (Suhre et al., Nature 2011).

Prof. Andres Acosta

MD, PhD

Professor of Medicine, Consultant of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA

Dr. Acosta is a physician, scientist. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and Obesity Medicine and Nutrition. Dr. Acosta holds an MD from Universidad San Francisco De Quito, Ecuador, and a PhD from University of Florida, Gainesville. Currently, he is a Professor of Medicine and Consultant in Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. He directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Program and directs the Precision Medicine for Obesity Program at Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Acosta's goal is to treat and ultimately cure obesity, which he considers this century's health epidemic. Dr. Acosta's research focuses on precision medicine for obesity with the aim to identify the right therapy for the right patient, minimizing side effects. His research is supported by the National Institute of Health, many foundations and industry. He is a recognized national and international obesity and cardiometabolic disease expert with many patents, more than 155 peer-reviewed publications, including publications in the Lancet, Cell Metabolism, Nature Communications, Gut and Gastroenterology, and many book chapters. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Time, CNN, NPR, among others. He won the 40-under-40 innovation award at Minneapolis Business Journal 2020 and Tekne Award (Winners exemplify Technology Innovation in Minnesota). He launched the first-of-its-kind diagnostic test to predict response to GLP-1s and other obesity/metabolic interventions. This invention was featured by Time Magazine as one of the best inventions of 2024.

Prof. Ali Aminian

MD

Professor of Surgery, Cleveland Clinic

Dr Ali Aminian is a Professor of Surgery and Director of Bariatric and Metabolic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States. As an academic surgeon, Dr. Aminian has been involved in clinical and experimental research on the role of bariatric surgery in management of obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disease. His studies in high impact journals such as Nature Medicine, JAMA, and NEJM have been widely covered by the media such as New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, TIME, CNN, Reuters, Newsweek, and Forbes, indicating their importance from public health perspective.

Dr. Kwang-Wei Tham

MB,BCh,BAO (Ireland)

Senior Consultant Endocrinologist, National Healthcare Group, Senior Clinical Lecturer, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore

Kwang-Wei Tham is a Senior Consultant Endocrinologist with the National Healthcare Group, Singapore. She has extensive experience in establishing and scaling integrated, comprehensive obesity services—encompassing both medical and surgical treatment —across major institutions in Singapore, alongside developing real-world clinical databases to inform practice and outcomes across diverse ethnic populations.

Her active service in regional and global obesity organisations, coupled with her participation in various international obesity guidelines and consensus, has enabled her to appreciate the heterogenous landscape of obesity and the clinical gaps and needs in obesity care in Asia. She continues to work collaboratively across disciplines to strengthen the delivery of evidence-based, patient-centred obesity care and to advance the understanding of various aspects of obesity management, particularly within Asia.

Dr. Kamil Demircan

MD, PhD

DFG Walter Benjamin Fellow and postdoctoral researcher, Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (PHURI)

Kamil Demircan is a clinician scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the Precision Healthcare University Research Institute at Queen Mary University of London and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He is also a visiting researcher at the IMS Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge and the Institute of Health Informatics at University College London.

Kamil received the prestigious Walter Benjamin Fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for his research on identifying clinical and molecular predictors and mediators of complications in individuals with type 2 diabetes and obesity, including leading large-scale translational studies published in Nature Medicine (Demircan et al., 2026). His research integrates population-scale clinical and multi-omic datasets with longitudinal health outcomes to advance precision medicine approaches for metabolic diseases.

He obtained his MD/PhD at the Charité University, Berlin in collaboration with Lund University Sweden and was awarded the Robert Koch Prize of the Charité for his thesis.

Prof. Wendy A. Brown

MBBS (hons) PhD FACS FRACS

Professor and Chair, Monash University Department of Surgery, School of Translational Medicine, Alfred Campus, Monash University.
Program Director of Surgical Services, Alfred Care Group, Bayside Health 

Professor Wendy Brown is a clinically active metabolic bariatric surgeon. Her research program focuses on understanding the mechanisms and benefits of weight loss, improving long‑term patient outcomes, and informing best practice in bariatric and upper gastrointestinal care.

A major emphasis of Professor Brown’s research leadership is real‑world outcomes and data‑driven policy. She led the development of the Australia and New Zealand Bariatric Surgery Registry, securing funding and overseeing its national rollout to capture longitudinal outcomes for all bariatric procedures across both countries, including weight loss, metabolic health and re‑operation rates over 10 years.

She is currently the Secretary/Treasurer of IFSO and has previously been President of the ANZMOSS, the AANZGOSA, Chair of the IFSO Global Registry Committee and Chair of the IFSO Scientific Committee. Her expertise has led her to be involved in the NHMRC Obesity Management Guidelines, World Obesity Federation/IFSO treatment guidelines, and The Lancet Commission defining Clinical Obesity.

Dr. Bruno Halpern

MD, PhD

President-Elect, World Obesity Federation; Vice-president Brazilian Society of Obesity (ABESO), Collaborator Obesity Unit, University of São Paulo, Primary Investigator BRTrials Clinical Research Centre

World Obesity Federation President-Elect and ABESO Vice-President, Bruno Halpern, MD, PhD, is an endocrinologist trained at the University of São Paulo, where he also completed his PhD focused on circadian rhythms, brown fat, and melatonin. He has a role in the Obesity Unit at the University of São Paulo Hospital, focusing on medical education, and serves as Primary Investigator at BRTrials, working on the development of new therapies for obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Alongside his clinical and research work, Dr. Halpern has increasingly focused on the intersection between individual obesity care and broader public health strategies. Through his leadership roles within the World Obesity Federation and strong clinical background, he works with global initiatives involving education, access to treatment, reduction of obesity stigma, and the implementation of evidence-based obesity care across different healthcare systems and socioeconomic realities.

This combination of hands-on clinical experience, involvement in clinical trials and innovation, and participation in international public health and policy discussions provides him with a unique perspective to contribute to this Comission, helping connect real-world clinical practice with population-level strategies, data generation, and evidence-based decision-making to improve obesity care and outcomes.

Dr. Nasreen Alfaris,

MD, MPH

Dr. Nasreen Alfaris is a board-certified endocrinologist with subspecialty expertise in obesity medicine and metabolic disease. She holds an MPH from Dartmouth College and completed advanced training at the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. Her work spans clinical obesity care, research, guideline development, education, policy, and health-system implementation.

Dr. Alfaris brings a valuable perspective from Saudi Arabia and the MENA region, where obesity and metabolic disease represent major public health challenges. Her expertise aligns closely with the Commission’s goals of advancing data-driven obesity care across diverse populations and healthcare settings. She has contributed to obesity pharmacotherapy trials, post-bariatric care, and international consensus statements, with publications in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Obesity, and the International Journal of Obesity.

She currently chairs the Saudi Arabian Obesity Guidelines Committee, leads national obesity medicine training initiatives, and has contributed to obesity policy and model-of-care development in Saudi Arabia. She helped establish one of the country’s first dedicated obesity medicine centres and founded the Saudi Obesity Medicine Fellowship Program, the first of its kind in the region. She also serves as Vice-Chair of the IFSO Integrated Health Guidelines Committee.

Through her combined clinical, academic, and policy expertise, Dr. Alfaris contributes to the development of scientifically rigorous, scalable, and globally relevant obesity care frameworks.

Prof/Dr. Sonia S. Anand

MD, PhD

Dr. Anand’s contributions extend beyond discovery science to large-scale implementation and global impact. She has led major international cohort studies and clinical trials (including SHARE, INTERHEART, PURE, CAHHM, and SAHARA), published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers, and held prestigious leadership roles such as Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Director of the Global Glocal Research Centre for Health Equity, and Associate Vice-President of Global Healthand inaugural lead of the Mary Heersink School of Global Health and Social Medicine at McMaster. Her work has directly informed clinical practice, including redefining obesity thresholds and developing culturally and biologically appropriate prevention strategies for high-risk populations. She has also played a key role in translating evidence into policy and guideline development, and her contributions have been recognized through election to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada, as well as major national and international awards.

Within the Nature Medicine Commission, Dr. Anand offers critical expertise in integrating ethnicity, adiposity phenotyping, and health equity into data-driven obesity care. The Commission’s mandate to develop more precise, personalized, and equitable approaches to obesity aligns closely with her career-long focus on understanding biological heterogeneity and improving risk prediction across diverse populations. She will contribute deep methodological and clinical expertise in population epidemiology, globally representative cohort design, and the interpretation of adiposity metrics that go beyond BMI—ensuring that decision-support tools capture clinically meaningful variation in fat distribution and metabolic risk across ancestries.

Dr. Mohammed T Hudda

PhD

Mohammed Hudda is a biostatistician and obesity researcher whose work focuses on improving the assessment and understanding of obesity across the life course and in diverse global populations. His research has challenged conventional approaches to assessing adiposity through the development and extensive international validation of an algorithm that accurately estimates total body fat mass using only readily available measures of weight, height, age, and sex. His work has informed international obesity research and practice through collaborations spanning Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Dr Hudda currently serves as Scientist–Biostatistician at the Dasman Diabetes Institute (Kuwait) and is an Affiliate Researcher at the Center for Clinical Research and Prevention, Copenhagen University Hospital. He has led and contributed to major international studies published in leading journals including BMJ, JAMA Network Open, and the International Journal of Obesity. His research has been supported by competitive funding, including a Pfizer Global Obesity ASPIRE Grant as Principal Investigator, and has served as an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Expert Consultant on childhood obesity.

His contributions have been recognised through awards including the European Association for the Study of Obesity Early Career Childhood Obesity Research Award and a Postdoctoral Research Scientist Excellence Award. Dr Hudda brings to the Commission his vast experience in adiposity assessment, epidemiology, prediction modelling, and the statistical analysis of complex health data.

Prof. Sébastien Czernichow

MD, PhD

Sébastien Czernichow is Professor of Nutrition at Paris Cité University (Faculty of Health | Université Paris Cité (u-paris.fr) and head of the Department of Nutrition at Georges Pompidou Hospital (Paris, France). This Department is dedicated to the management of patients living with severe obesity and is part of a European network for accredited multidisciplinary treatment centers (COMs - EASO). His major research interest is focused on the epidemiology of obesity. He has published 337 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Sandi Azab

MSc, RPh, PhD

Dr. Sandi Azab is assistant professor in metabolomic epidemiology and global heath, and a registered pharmacist with the Ontario College of Pharmacists. She completed her BSc and MSc in pharmaceutical sciences, Alexandria University, Egypt. Following, she received her doctoral degree in chemical biology and metabolomics from McMaster University, Canada, and completed her postdoctoral training in epidemiology and bioinformatics at the departments of medicine and health research methods, McMaster University, Canada. Dr. Azab received the prestigious Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Research Excellence, Diversity, and Independence (REDI) Award (2023), holds a McMaster University Department of Medicine Clive-Kearon Early-Career Research Award (2025), and was recently selected to WHF Emerging Leaders Programme (2026).

Sandi’s research is focused on cardiometabolic disease and its early origins, working within multiethnic Canadian and global cohorts and with a bench-to-bedside clinical translation approach. Examples from her work include uncovering distinct metabolic signatures of paediatric metabolic syndrome [Azab et al. BMC Medicine, 2021], metabolic sex-dependent differences of obesity in young children [Azab et al., BMC Medicine, 2023], as well as early public health tools for risk assessment of adiposity and obesity in South Asian children [Azab et al, JAMA Network Open, 2025], that hold much promise to improve cardiometabolic risk assessment, necessary for data-driven clinical management. Her research further contributes to the application of metabolomic epidemiology to triangulate the interplay between upstream genetic factors and downstream environmental and dietary exposures.

Prof/Dr. Alice P.S. KONG

MBChB, MD, MRCP, FRCP, FHKCP, FHKAM

Dr. Kong is a physician researcher with accreditations in internal medicine and endocrinology. She was the chairperson of Specialty Board in Advanced Internal Medicine, Hong Kong College of Physicians (2017-2021). She is currently the Honorary Secretary of Hong Kong Society of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Reproduction (2024-2026) and the Board Member of International Society of Endocrinology (2025-2029). 

Her research interest is diabesity with focuses on epidemiological studies and clinical trials related to lifestyle factors, novel technology and therapeutic strategies, and emerging complications. She was the Associate Editor and Editorial Board Member of Obesity Reviews (2023-2025) and is the Editor in Chief of Primary Care Diabetes, Editorial Board Member of Diabetes Care, Section Editor of Current Diabetes Reports, and International Associate Editor of Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics.

Prof/Dr. Michelle Kelly-Irving

PhD, HDR

Research Director, Inserm, France

Michelle Kelly-Irving leads the EQUITY research team focussed on health inequalities at the Centre for Epidemiology and Research in Population Health at the University of Toulouse. She is specialised in the field of life course epidemiology, and specifically on the mechanisms and processes involved in the production of health inequalities across the life course. She has developed a program of research to examine intersecting social-structural factors that drive the production of health inequalities operating through psychosocial, material and behavioural mechanisms from early life onwards.

She is specifically interested in embodiment, the set of processes through which the social environment becomes biologically embedded. She develops research combining social and biological longitudinal data to understand and tackle health inequalities from a public health angle. 

Dr. Omniyat M. Al-Hajeri

MBBCh, MPH, DrPH, MA, FRCPI

Executive Director, Community Health Sector, Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre (ADPHC); Consultant Endocrinologist, VPS Healthcare, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Dr. Al-Hajeri brings to the Commission a rare pairing of frontline endocrinology practice and executive public health leadership. A consultant in endocrinology, diabetes and metabolic disease since 2008 and a SCOPE-certified obesity physician, she has served Abu Dhabi’s health system for 25 years and is a founding member of the Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre (ADPHC), where she has been Executive Director of the Community Health Sector since 2020. In this role she has led the emirate’s obesity response across the full policy cycle: authoring  in the Department of Health standards for obesity diagnosis and its pharmacological and surgical management (2012, 2013, 2018), DOH Service Requirements for the Weight Management Program for Overweight and Obese Children (2018), the standard for Centres of Excellence in bariatric surgery 2022, and the 2025 reimbursement policy for anti-obesity medications; establishing 11 chronic disease registries, including obesity, diabetes and prediabetes; and launching the Abu Dhabi Personalised Weight Management Programme (2025), the first of its kind in the region and only the second worldwide, combining digital monitoring, personalised clinical support and an innovative reimbursement model. She has chaired ADPHC’s scientific committee on childhood obesity  2017-2023.

Her influence extends to national and global guideline development: she served on the UAE Ministry of Health expert group for the National Clinical Guideline for Weight Management and Prevention of Adulthood Obesity, the World Obesity Federation’s MENA group and the joint IFSO–World Obesity Federation Global Obesity Management Taskforce, and contributed to the regional recommendations for adult obesity treatment in the Gulf and Lebanon and the “Obesity in the UAE” chapter in Healthcare in the United Arab Emirates (Springer, 2025). A Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, with DrPH and MPH degrees from Johns Hopkins University and an adjunct associate professorship in public health at Khalifa University, she offers the Commission deep, tested experience in translating obesity science into financed, implementable policy and standards, reimbursement models, registries and population-wide screening and a bridge to the Gulf, a region carrying one of the world’s highest obesity burdens.

A/Prof Laura E. Downey

PhD

Associate Professor, Health Economics and Policy, The George Institute for Global Health, UNSW; Advanced Fellow, Health Systems Science, Imperial College London

A/Prof Laura Downey leads The George Institute’s global program for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). She is a conjoint Associate Professor in health economics and policy in the School of Population Health at UNSW, and an Advanced Research Fellow in health systems science at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London, UK.

A/Prof Downey's research is focused broadly on evaluating health system performance in relation to UHC goals, and developing innovative solutions to support equitable access to high quality, affordable care for the world's most under-served populations. She is a passionate advocate for health equity, and in particular gender equity, where she uses data to champion greater visibility of women's health issues and more inclusive and participatory evidence to policy processes. She is a Senior Investigator and the Capacity Strengthening co-lead of a £10million NIHR Global Health Research Centre for Non-Communicable Diseases and Environmental Change, where her research focuses on community-driven multisectoral intervention design, delivery, and evaluation to strengthen health systems to protect populations in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh from environmental issues such as extreme heat and air pollution.

A/Prof Downey is an active invited advisor numerous governments and multilateral institutions. She is currently a member of the WHO advisory group for the use of Glucagon-like Peptide Receptor Agonists (GLP1-RAs) for the management of obesity in adults. She was an invited expert member of the Health Economics advisory group to the UK Infected Blood Inquiry (2020-2024), whose work directly informed recommendations made by the Inquiry Chair to British Parliament. She was an advisor to the Indian federal government between 2015 -2019 to support the establishment of a core Health Technology Assessment (HTA) function within the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and remains an active advisor to the Indian Institute of Public Health, the Indian Council of Medical Research, and numerous state governments across India.

Dr Downey has active research collaborators across Asia, Africa, and Europe and has worked in partnership with global institutions such as the World Health Organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank. She has held previous positions with the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK, the Centre for Global Development Europe, and University College London.

Dr. Marie Spreckley

Senior Research Fellow and Programme Lead, Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (PHURI), Queen Mary University of London

Marie Spreckley is a Senior Research Fellow and Programme Lead at PHURI, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). Her research examines how obesity treatments can be translated into effective, equitable and person-centred care, drawing on her clinical experience in NHS weight-management services and private practice.

Before returning to QMUL, Marie worked at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, where she was Principal Investigator of AMPLIFY, a mixed-methods study exploring people’s experiences of GLP-1 and dual GIP/GLP-1 therapies for weight management. She brings to the Commission expertise in behavioural nutrition and mixed-methods research, alongside extensive experience managing complex multidisciplinary research programmes and partnerships.

Dr Evelyn Gitau  

Chief Scientific Officer, Science For Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation)

Dr Evelyn Gitau is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Science for Africa Foundation (SFA Foundation), where she provides strategic leadership for the organisation’s science portfolio. With over 20 years of experience in biomedical research, she brings extensive expertise in programme management, grants management, fundraising, strategy, policy, and monitoring, learning and evaluation.

 Her interdisciplinary background spans impact evaluation, implementation research, cellular immunology, molecular biology, and infectious diseases. At SFA Foundation, she leads a skilled programme team that designs, manages, and mobilises funding for science and innovation initiatives across Africa in collaboration with global and regional partners. Under her leadership, the Foundation ensures programmes deliver impactful evidence that informs Africa’s development agenda while positioning SFA Foundation as a global thought leader. She also champions high-level advocacy and strategic partnerships to strengthen the organisation’s influence.

Previously, Dr Gitau was Director of Programmes at the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC). She has received several accolades, including recognition as a Next Einstein Forum Fellow by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. She also serves on advisory boards of organisations advancing science and evidence generation in Africa.

 Dr Gitau holds a PhD in Life Sciences from the Open University/Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK. Deeply committed to mentorship, she actively supports the next generation of African researchers, believing they must play a central role in shaping policy and decision-making for the continent’s future.